Momo has lived at Madame Rosa's Paris boarding house ever since he can remember, one of an ever-changing band of prostitutes' children. But when money becomes tight, and Madame Rosa gets too ill to climb the six flights of stairs to their apartment, he determines to support her any way he can. Along the way, he finds community in a host of eccentric characters in the slums of Belleville - from Madame Lola, a Senegalese trans woman who watches out for Momo and the other children, to Monsieur Hamil, an Algerian carpet seller with a passion for Victor Hugo.

A work of streetwise humour and tender devotion, The Life Before Us was published under the pseudonym Emile Ajar and went on to win the Prix Goncourt.